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Touchpad Patent Holder Tsera Sues Just About Everyone
eldavojohn writes "Okay, well, maybe not everyone but more than twenty companies (including Apple, Qualcomm, Motorola and Microsoft) are being sued for a generic patent that reads: 'Apparatus and methods for controlling a portable electronic device, such as an MP3 player; portable radio, voice recorder, or portable CD player are disclosed. A touchpad is mounted on the housing of the device, and a user enters commands by tracing patterns with his finger on a surface of the touchpad. No immediate visual feedback is provided as a command pattern is traced, and the user does not need to view the device to enter commands.' Sounds like their may be a few companies using that technology. The suit was filed on July 15th in the favoritest place ever to file patent claim lawsuits: Texas Eastern District Court. It's a pretty classic patent troll; they've been holding this patent since 2003 and they just noticed now that everyone and his dog are using touchpads to control portable electronic devices."
This patent is for touchpads not touch screens
1. A portable electronic device comprising: a housing; and a touch-sensitive surface mounted on the housing, the portable electronic device controlled by a user tracing a command pattern on the touch-sensitive surface with a finger, the command pattern matching one of a plurality of preset patterns, each of the plurality of the present patterns corresponding to a predefined function of the portable electronic device, the command pattern being traced without requiring the user to view the portable electronic device, wherein at least one of the plurality of patterns corresponds to a predefined function that is performed only for so long as contact is maintained with the touch-sensitive surface, wherein the command pattern is composed of one of more motions of the finger on the touch-sensitive surface, the one or more motions selected from a group of motions consisting of a left-to-right motion, a right-to-left motion, an upward motion, a downward motion, a clockwise circular motion, a counterclockwise circular motion, a diagonal motion, a tapping motion, and holding the pointing device against the touch-sensitive surface.
In the patent itself they use the Palm Pilot as an example of the technology difference. The PDA is a touch screen device with visual cues guiding your touch. The patent is for blind operation via a touch surface, distinguishing commands my motions or patterns. The patent exempts computers and distinctly applies itself to portable media/entertainment devices.
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My Palm 1000 from 1996 invalidates the claims in this patent through prior art. I seem to remember the Apple Newton being touchscreen too, but I didn't have one, so I'm not sure.
This isn't going anywhere.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
The Graffiti entry area on early Palms provided no visual feedback, and could be used to enter commands as well as characters.
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you cant be serious. military fuel consumption makes the Department of Defense the single largest consumer of petroleum in the U.S.
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/13199
OK, how about the old HP-150? The place I worked at part-time in college had one of these back in 1984. Oh, by the way, GET OFF MY LAWN!!!
If you're looking at the touchpad of an iPod Classic you don't -- only when you look up at the screen do you see music lists scrolling by.
Still -- make a product. Don't sue for ideas.
The patent exempts computers and distinctly applies itself to portable media/entertainment devices.
I *hate* that kind of patent. It pretty much says that this is something that's already being done in closely related devices, and they're staking their claim at the land office before it inevitably is applied to this class of device. There were about a gazillion GPS and mobile computer patents like this in the late 90s eary 00s.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
No, it makes them the biggest purchaser and stockpiler. Not the biggest user. Enormous difference. But go on, keep quoting the CEO of the American Petroleum Institude, Red Cavaney. It's not like he, as CEO of ConecoPhillips, was the primary architect of Bush's eight year campaign of lies about the nature of petroleum, nor is it the case that Bush regularly told lies about the military to generate support he desired.
But I suppose knowing the first thing about the source you're citing is too much to ask from an argumentative SlashDot nobody these days. He was, by the way, also involved with the Enron energy scandal, and helped architect the Walker v. Cheney oil scandal.
Also you should ask WalMart about how to treat minimum wage people.
Incidentally, just because something is of strategic value and is being purchased as such doesn't mean that it's being burned as fuel.
Now, I don't mean to scare you, but I did a little bit of basic research. For one, the number you get when reading around varies about 700%; that page alone lets it vary by 120%, and NPR cites the number as about 40% lower. For two, the number cited is 340,000 barrels per day (roughly the output of two mid-sized offshore drilling rigs) during an active two nation war, whereas the American public consumes 20,800,000 billion barrels per day, loding the military at 1.6 percent of the nation's usage.
You know, the nation served by six gas companies.
CNOOC just bought a 75 billion barrel a year contract from Marathon - three and a half times America's total consumption, and more than 50 times what the military uses. Neither of those are particularly big, as far as oil companies go.
So yeah, the military is the biggest buyer of light refined oil, because the oil companies buy rights, and everyone else buys gasoline or crude. You just have to phrase scale very carefully, and ignore the blatantly obvious lie you're telling.
To give you a sense of scale, USPIRG - a far more reliable source of information about oil than an oil executive - suggests that public bus transportation in New York City alone suppressed the use of 1.8 billion gallons of oil versus what cars would have used. That's nearly fourteen times what the entire military used just saved by busses in one city.
If you really, genuinely believe that the US military is the world's largest oil buyer, you need to take off the blinders. It's the largest single purchaser of unprocessed light refined oil who doesn't deal in futures, and the only reason they don't deal in futures is that they cannot tolerage shortages. Of course they're the world's largest buyer of light refined oil - the only other people with the facilities to process it into something usable are the sellers.
That's a little bit like saying that a grocery store chain is the largest purchaser of beef because McDonalds buys hamburger instead.
Please be less gulliable.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
Interestingly, Palm is NOT on the list of companies being sued. Either they licensed the patent in question (who knows?), are not viewed as possible infringers (conceivable... perhaps the others all sell MP3 players of some sort and the smartphone/PDA isn't viewed as covered by the patent) or are too small to bother with in this litagation (unlikely).
Here's the complete list of alleged infringers from the suit:
Apple Inc.,
Auditek Corp.,
Bang & Olufsen Ameerica, Inc.,
Bang & Olufsen A/S,
Coby Electronics Corp.,
Cowon America, Inc.,
Cowon Systems, Inc.,
Dane Elec Corp. USA,
Data Station, Inc.,
IMA-Hong Kong, Ltd.,
Impecca USA, Inc.,
iRiver, Inc.,
Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V.,
Lasonic Electronics Corp.,
LG Electronics U.S.A., Inc.,
LG Electronics, Inc.,
LG Electronics Mobilecomm U.S.A., Inc.,
Mach Speed Technologies, Inc.,
Meizu Technology Co., Ltd.,
Microsoft Corp.,
Philips Electronics North America Corp.,
Spectra Merchandising International Inc.
TrekStor GmbH & Co. KG
Add to that that the patent probably also applies to input devices like stylus based drawing pads which have been used since well, even the atari 800xl had one of those beasts.
A democratic republic is the most consistantly beneficial to the greatest number of citizens of a country. Democracy is good in small numbers, but very quickly it breaks down and becomes unwieldy.
Most people forget the we do not live in a pure democracy, but rather a democratic republic where the minority is protected from the excesses of the majority. A true democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to eat for lunch.